Well, it’s down to the wire for my bat mitzvah. The haftarah is coming along nicely, though if Elisson and I were in the same room, I think blows would have been exchanged tonight. Or books thrown. I really want to whup him upside the haid, as they used to say. It started on Monday, when he was correcting a trope pronunciation and I said, “It’s Monday. I can’t afford perfect.”

Yesterday, we were arguing about how I pronounced a line, and I heard his wife in the background tell him, “You’re not a very patient teacher.” That made me laugh. A lot. She’s a good woman, allowing me to pester her husband for an hour or two a day these past three weeks to learn my haftarah. I’d love to see them both this weekend, but that’s too much to ask. Ah, well. Now I have to get to Atlanta to visit them and take them out to dinner in thanks for all their help.

Well, people are arriving tomorrow. Sarah’s coming over tomorrow morning to help me get the apartment in shape. My brother Eric is coming a day earlier than I expected. And I really can’t believe it’s almost here. I swear, I had six months to study and prepare just a few weeks ago. What happened to all that time?

This will be my last post until Saturday night or Sunday, I think. There’s no more extra time to steal.

From the Washington Post:

President Bush has proposed a sixfold increase in aid to the Palestinians, including $150 million in direct cash transfers to the Palestinian Authority, in an effort to bolster the government in advance of a Middle East peace conference planned for later this month in Annapolis.

The $435 million in additional aid, on top of $77 million requested earlier this year, has attracted little notice in the president’s $45.9 billion supplemental request last week to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if approved, it would constitute the administration’s largest amount of direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. Previously, the administration had limited cash transfers to $50 million at a time.

Let’s get a quick timeline together:

* US gives some $70 million annually to the moderate terrorists of the PA, including weapons and training for their security forces to keep out the extremist terrorists.
* The extremist terrorists win an election and take over the government.
* The US and EU balk at this new Hamas government so Abbas is installed as a figurehead president to receive more money.
* Hamas goes to war with the moderate terrorists, with all their US-supplied weapons and training. Fatah runs away from Gaza with barely a skirmish.
* The US and EU decide to reward the moderate terrorists by allowing them to form an undemocratic government and ignoring Gaza - and they pressure Israel to give this government a couple of hundred million dollars.
* Moderate terrorists continue terrorizing, with suicide attacks thwarted by Israel, with press restrictions, with continued incitement against Israel on moderate terrorist TV.
* Now the US decides that the reason that the moderate terrorists lost the the extremists is not because they have no motivation, not because they have no desire for peace with Israel, not because Fatah in reality only controls a small area around Ramallah while Hamas is more popular everywhere else - the real reason is because the US didn’t give Fatah enough money to begin with.

As the expression goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. The US has zero influence on Palestinian Arabs in any meaningful way - in fact, all evidence points to the fact that they hate the US with a passion. Whomever the US supports will actually automatically lose prestige in the Arab world. The only thing the US has is money, and it therefore thinks that money can solve all problems.

For thirty years the US has singlehandedly propped up the Egyptian government with tens of billions of dollars to influence Egypt to adhere to its peace treaty with Israel. This may have brought a temporary end to war but it has hardly brought peace - Egyptians remain the most anti-semitic and misozionistic people on the planet. The idea of normalizing relations with Egypt, so sought after by Israel in the 1970s, is laughable today. Egypt is a single bullet away from being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Three decades of “peace” has not moderated the Egyptian people one bit. The only reason there is not a state of war now is because a series of autocratic rulers have worked to ensure that the money pipeline remains open.

This is hardly a model for Israel-Palestinian Arab peace. Gaza, Al Aqsa Brigades, a weak non-democratic government - all these show that any money the US gives to Mahmoud Abbas will end up going to the terrorists, one way or another, and will impede peace rather than promote it.

Last September, CAMERA came out with a report showing an amazing correlation between the amount that Palestinian Arabs receive and the number of murders they do the following year:

The idea that the US can solve this problem with money is not only wrong, it is exactly the opposite - if the US wants to increase terror, the surest way is by increasing “aid”.

In a controversial essay in the LA Jewish Journal Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky asks to Consider a divided Jerusalem.

After acknowledging the controversial nature of his views and getting a few formalities out of the way, he says he seeks honesty. The problem is that even if one accepts all of Rabbi Kanefsky’s assertions, Mere Rhetoric writes

You don’t walk into a negotiation with the position you expect to end up with and you don’t walk in explaining what you owe to the other side. You walk in with a position more extreme than what you’re willing to live with, so you have something to give up when the other side comes in with a position more extreme than what they’re willing to live with. Coming to the negotiating table “telling an honest story” is the best way to lose negotiations. You don’t walk into a car shop saying “I’ll tell you that I’m only willing to spend $10,000, but actually I’ll go up to $20,000″ and you don’t say “besides, it would be totally unfair to you if I stuck to my original offer”. Nobody negotiates that way. But for some reason Israel is always expected to.

Similarly Elder of Ziyon writes

Simply put, the Arab/Israeli conflict is a land dispute. If one side claims all the land and the other side equivocates about that question, naturally the side that claims it all is in a position of power.This is not to say that Israel should lie. Its true claims are powerful enough, if they are not often stated as well as they should be. But this means that Israel should not negotiate by showing its hand as to what it is willing to give up - because these are essentially one-way negotiations, the question is how much land Israel will end up losing, and not what she will get in return because that is intangible (and almost certainly fantasy.) An “honest” negotiator will always lose because you will never find both sides putting on the table their final position.

Israel’s legal, moral and historic claims to Jerusalem - and the entire West Bank as well - are very strong, but they have been given up by successive Israeli governments, in some part because of this desire for “honesty.” Is Israel in better shape now than before Oslo? Is real peace any closer? Has Israel reaped rewards for its honest negotiations, which translates directly into capitulations?

There are two paragraphs that I’ll take issue with. The first:

An honest reading of this story reveals that there were voices in the inner circle of the Israeli government in 1967-1968 who warned that settling civilians in conquered territories was probably illegal under international law. But for very understandable reasons — among them security needs, Zionist ideologies of both the both secular and religious varieties, memories that were 20 years old, and memories that were 3,000 years old — these voices were overruled. We can identify with many of the ideas that carried the settlement project forward. But the fact remains that it is simply not honest on our part to pretend that the government of Israel didn’t know that there was likely a legal problem, or that the government was confident that international conventions did not apply to this situation. That just wouldn’t be an honest telling.

This is Tom Segev’s view, but it’s hardly an accepted view. But it’s also taking 2007 and projecting it onto 1967. In 1967 Israeli leaders no doubt thought that they’d trade some of the land they captured for peace with Egypt and Jordan (and presumably the wider Arab world.) But Israel never assumed that it would be forced to return to its Auschwitz borders. Resolution 242 was worded “from territories” not “from all territories” confirming that assumption. So no, it wouldn’t be an honest telling to say that Israeli leaders expected the country to risk international ostracism due to its policies after the 6 Day War. I’m not going to judge Rabbi Kanefsky, but his telling is not accurate.

Two paragraphs later he writes

The Religious Zionist leadership (similar to today’s Evangelical supporters of Israel) made a different judgment, namely that settling the Biblical heartland would further hasten the unfolding of the messianic age. Thus, the Arab population already there was not our problem. God would deal with it. This belief too — reasonable though it may have seemed at the time — has also turned out to be wrong. To tell the story honestly, this mistake too must be acknowledged.

By casting himself in opposition to those with messianic beliefs, Rabbi Kanefsky is making a case that his view is rational. Though some Religious Zionists and some Evangelical supporters believe that settling Judea and Samaria will hasten the Moshiach (Messiah) that’s by no means the only reason.

Religious Zionists, in particular, see the settling of Judea and Samaria as validating history. Jews have a historical connection and right to Israel. Denying the historical connection of Jews to Hebron and Shechem, for example, also denies the historical ties to Tel Aviv or Yafo (Jaffa). And this belief is important for it runs counter to one of the primary foundations of Palestinian nationalism.

One other thing bothers me about that paragraph. In 2000 Israel withdrew from Lebanon. Hezbollah instead of disarming and making peace was emboldened and strengthened. In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza, instead of gaining peace, it gained Qassams and Hamas won power. Does Rabbi Kanefsky really believe that dividing Jerusalem will strengthen Israel or appease its enemies? Did he learn from those mistakes?

But Rabbi Kanefsky also has to be careful what he advocates. As a public figure his views - controversial within his own community - will be used. He received a glowing profile in the LA Times. He has the admiration of many outside his community. His opinion is rare but it will now be magnified out of proportion. And I find little reason to doubt that his op-ed will be used not just by Israel’s critics but by its enemies too.

Kanefsky sees things that do not exist. And so, now that the Los Angeles Times has given Kanefsky’s minority opinion legs, we are forced to weigh in on the matter and give this narcissist the last thing he should be afforded: attention.

You see that’s one of the core problems of the left; when they publicly advocate for their extreme leftist positions they become invaluable collaborators to Israel’s and Judaism’s enemies.

That’s harsh, but if Rabbi Kanefsky doesn’t realize the end result of his article the trait he can claim is naiveté not honesty.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

One quote from Coulter’s appearance on Hannity & Colmes last night leaped out at me:

And if you’re going to go around citing all the people I have offended, Alan, I have a thousand Orthodox rabbis supporting me.

Name three. Name three Orthodox rabbis who will agree with you that Jews have to be “perfected” by becoming Christian. In fact, name one. Just one. Not even the odious Neturei Karta will go along with that.

I’m calling bullshit on Coulter. No, I’m outright calling her a liar.

Liar.

Seth Freedman has, in his endearingly provocative manner, slapped together another piece for CiF.

As in most of his other articles, the recipe was simple: take one side of the Israeli/Palestinian strife, ignore all that is not black and white and presto - you have a perfect stick to stir some unrest in the CiF cesspool.

This time, however, Seth has outdone even himself, starting with a glaringly wrong premise:

That Israel doesn’t know how to stop the barrage of Kassam rockets from Gaza is a given - defence officials have been wracking their brains for years over the issue, to no avail whatsoever.

Bullshit - and everyone knows this. We all know very well that there are several possible solutions to the barrage (now it is my turn to become an armchair general and be outrageous on purpose):

1. Answer every rocket by ten (or a hundred) rockets directed as Hamas/Jihad will - into the centers of Gaza’s civilian population
2. Reoccupy the whole Gaza strip - not for a brief operation - for keeps, and bring the settlers back
3. Transfer the whole 1.5 million of Gazans elsewhere
4. Kill the whole 1.5 million

Now, no matter how outrageous these four options are, they are a) technically possible and b) have been already carried out by other people at other times. Of course, some armchair general could ask why the most obvious option is omitted: making peace. Well, Seth himself offers a (partial) answer:

Rightly or wrongly, many see the rocket attacks on Israel as entirely legitimate and worthy actions…

Unfortunately, this is how Sharon’s idea of transforming the troubled Gaza strip into a model of exemplary neighborhood for future coexistence turned out. “Making Sderot a ghost town”, incessantly attacking the border crossings (which are supposed to provide the vital foodstuffs, medicaments, fuel etc.), conducting a vicious brainwashing of their people - in short, the current rulers of Gaza strip are intentionally causing hardships to the civilian population on their side of the border and doing their best to our side to provoke us into one of the four responses outlined above (you guess which one).

It doesn’t take a very bright armchair general to notice that Seth does not have a slightest idea of what to do in the situation, aside of the lame “No one is saying it’s going to be easy to halt the Kassams…“. And his referrals to the international law are pure crap. Just look again at the four options above and answer a simple question: which one is preferable to the occasional electricity switch-off?

Now regarding this “understanding”:

Israel, understandably, doesn’t want to risk its soldiers’ lives by sending them back into Gaza to tackle the terror cells head-on…

Of all the crappy journalism… Doesn’t Seth realize that there is another compelling concern - about the number of civilian “bystanders” that are inevitably going to die in their thousands in case of full-scale IDF invasion of Gaza? Which invasion will be carried out according to the international law, by the way.

I can understand and share Seth’s frustration by the unending enmity and the lack of progress on the way to peace. Inane articles assigning blame to one side and not offering a glimmer of a solution are quite another matter.

P.S. From BBC, of all sources:

As usual in the Middle East, it is not international law that determines policy. The firing of Qassam rockets at Israeli towns itself is internationally regarded as violating the Geneva Convention prohibition on attacks aimed solely at civilians. That does not stop the rockets.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Last week several bloggers noted a Guaridan story that terrorists in Gaza were using Google Earth to target locations in Israel.

So when I saw this item, I thought, “Oh good, Google has responded to the concerns.”

A tipster to Newsbusters shares the following info: A search of Google maps under “Israel” reveals a map that is completely devoid of any detail. Yet, neighboring Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even Turkey all have cities and roads noted.

And indeed, if you click on the link, Israel is devoid of any details, unlike the surrounding countries. However, in the upper right hand corner you’ll see a box divided into three sections with links to Map, Satellite and Hybrid. If you choose the latter two you can get some details. but if you zoom in too close you get the following message “We are sorry but we don’t have at this zoom level for this region.” (Whoops, in other cases it looks like you can zoom in all the way.)

So it does appear that for some reason, Google is blocking some but not all detailed information on Israel.

However, at Seraphic Secret a commenter noted that Google Earth still has the detailed information that could be (and was) used by terrorists.

So I guess I was too quick to give Google credit. (Although perhaps Google has more control over the map than over the satellite imagery.) Apparently Google hasn’t addressed the problem of Google Earth.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The democratically-elected government of the Palestinian terrortories[sic] is declaring its intention to murder large numbers of Israelis and, indeed, to start an “offensive war” with Israel (like they’re not already doing that).

Muhammad Deif, the commander of Hamas’ military wing, has said that the movement will strike in the heart of Israel in the near future, a senior Hamas member said Tuesday.

The man, Sheikh Ahmed Hamdan from the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, said that he recently met with Deif in his hiding place, and heard from him that Hamas will soon replace its defensive fighting policy with an offensive one.

According to Hamdan, “The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, plans to begin its attack against the Israeli occupation in the coming weeks, and will not settle for the defensive policy.”

Now, this could be a variation on the “opening the gates of hell” rhetoric that we hear every time the IDF take out a Hamas terrorist, but it’s important to note that these are Hamasniks openly threatening to murder Israeli civilians. Funny how the world media never manages to pick up on these stories, but if an IDF missile strike hits a bunch of terrorists, the news media pick it up in a heartbeat.

Something tells me, though, that it’s not just talk. There are too many reports of Hamas action going on right now. They’re threatening to take over the West Bank by next year. (And won’t that be a wonderful gift if Israel leaves the West Bank and Hamas moves in? It’ll be just like Gaza, only closer to more Israeli population centers.) They’ve smuggled 112 tons of explosives since the disengagement, most of it since Hamas took over. And even the so-called “moderates” (yeah, right) are threatening war if the Annapolis talks don’t lead to a significant step forward.

“If the summit fails – frustration will win out over everything else and it will have a negative affect on the region. I cannot predict exactly what will happen, but it may lead to more wars.

“I warn now against failure there, which will open the door for extremists and extremism – and that door will be very difficult to close,” said Qureia at a conference held by Meretz activists.

And what exactly is the situation now, with Hamas ruling Gaza and Abbas pretending that he’s cracking down on terror in the West Bank? They’re still attacking Israelis regularly. And Abbas still refuses to crack down on terror.

I hold out no hope whatsoever for this farce of a “peace” conference. The Palestinians are doing what they always do: Demanding land from Israel while promising absolutely nothing in return, and threatening war if their demands aren’t met. Same song, same tune, slightly different players. If President Bush and Condi Rice think they are going to leave a Palestinian state as their legacy, I think they’d better look for another legacy. As Omri often points out, since the world never makes the Palestinians own up to any of their own responsibilities, there’s no reason to think they’re going to start now.

I swear, we can just recycle our posts of previous years. I guarantee you you can search through my archives and find a post you could swap this with, event for event. I can’t believe I haven’t burned out on this crap yet.

Saudi King Abdullah spoke to the BBC before his trip to Britain and made some amazingly hypocritical statements. Of course, the Beeb couldn’t be expected to call him on them, as the formerly great kingdom submits to the current Kingdom, its largest trading partner. (The transcript in not online, but a small part of the video is.)

“We don’t want concessions. We are people with rights and we demand our rights,” the king told the BBC when asked whether he expected any Israeli concessions in order to reach a Middle East peace settlement….

Speaking about the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, the king said he believed that the conference would fail unless the Palestinians’ needs were taken more seriously. He emphasized the return of Palestinian refugees to their country. “This is a humanitarian condition for peace.”

Too bad the interviewer was too ignorant to point out that it is a wee bit hypocritical for Abdullah to whine about Palestinian Arab rights when the Kingdom itself refuses to give citizenship to Palestinian Arabs, even as hundreds of thousands have helped build his country. It is truly bigotry.

And even so, he pretends to identify with them saying not that Palestinian Arabs have rights, but “we are people with rights.” For all the incessant whining that the US and Europe aren’t “evenhanded” when it comes to the Middle East, this basic standard is completely thrown out the window by his own words as he sheds even the pretext of objectivity on this issue.

Not to mention that to hear the Saudi king talk about “rights” from one of the most repressive regimes on Earth should cause anyone overhearing to vomit on the spot.

His insulting words didn’t end here, though:

In the BBC interview, King Abdullah said it would take 20 to 30 years to defeat terrorism. “My advice to all countries including Britain is that they should not show any leniency in fighting terrorism,” he said. The king also revealed the recent arrest of some terror financiers in the Kingdom and said Al-Qaeda continued to be a big problem for Saudi Arabia.
…The BBC also reported that King Abdullah is annoyed that the rest of the world has largely failed to act on his proposal to establish an international counterterrorism center. “Everybody has accepted the proposal but then did nothing to implement it,” the king said.

“This center, under the umbrella of the United Nations, will collect information related to terrorism. We have learned from our experience that the speedy dispatch of information is the main factor in combating terrorism,” he explained.

…King Abdullah also said that Saudi Arabia had provided intelligence information to British authorities about a possible terrorist attack in the UK. “We sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain, but unfortunately no action was taken and you know what happened,” the king said about the deadly July 7, 2005 bombings.

One British newspaper, Bits of News, described the reaction to this last statement as “Whitehall officials have been almost as quick to offer embarrassed, low-key denials as government ministers have been to placate the King with sycophantic, simpering, clichéd words promising friendship and cooperation.”

Notice also the outlines of Abdullah’s proposal for a “counterterrorism” center. Under UN auspices, it would ensure that Islamic terror would be downplayed and nothing would be able to impede the spread of Saudi Wahhabi Islam that has inspired so many jihadists.

Then, with a straight face, Abdullah continued:

“Islam has given the most rights to women in the world and they are strong and important participants in our society,” he said when asked about the condition of women in Saudi Arabia.

Coming from a country where women are not allowed to drive, where they cannot testify in court, where they cannot vote and where they make up a tiny percentage of the workforce, this is a statement that an ordinary journalist would have demolished.

But the obnoxious King can say such absurd things with impunity, because his wealth and control over worldwide energy resources burnish the fiction that he is an ally in the war on terror, rather than the enemy.

Abdullah came to the UK with an entourage of 400 people, on four planes, taking 84 limousines from the airport. He personally gets rich off of Western petrodollars and uses his wealth skillfully to keep the West in permanent submission to his will. Saudi influence in First World governments far outweighs the fabled “Israel lobby”.

This rush to placate the Kingdom in its most wretched hypocritical glory is disgusting. But it will continue as long as we keep having to buy oil.

Rights groups challenge Gaza energy cuts

Human rights groups challenged Israel’s reduction of fuel supplies to Gaza and its intention to cut back on electricity, and Palestinians warned the measures could lead to a humanitarian crisis.The Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday gave the state five days to respond to the appeal from human rights groups for an injunction to halt the energy cutbacks, said Sari Bashi of Gisha, one of the 10 groups that filed the petition.

I wonder if the same groups have petitioned the Supreme Court on behalf of Sderot?

Palestinians said Israel cut fuel supplies by 30 percent on Sunday, though defense officials said the cut was only about 11 percent. Israel hopes the move will pressure Gaza’s Hamas rulers to halt near-daily rocket attacks by militants against Israeli towns.Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s infrastructure minister, said Monday that the cutbacks were a final attempt to avoid a military operation that would cause scores of civilian casualties.

“What’s the alternative? The alternative is that tomorrow or the next day we’ll be forced to bring three or four divisions and go into Gaza,” Ben-Eliezer said in an interview on Israel Radio. “What will the results be then?”

“There’s nothing we haven’t tried,” he said.

So Israel’s restricting fuel instead of invading. If Israel invaded do you think these “human rights” groups would approve? Or would they be out protesting the indiscriminate Israeli use of force? (And ignore the Palestinian indiscriminate use of force.)

My Right Word brings historical parallels from World War II and asks:

Don’t Israel’s citizens have rights, too?

Judeopundit looks at the economic implications of the fuel cutoff. (satire)

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

President Bush is awarding Harper Lee, author of To Kill A Mockingbird, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Bravo, Mr. President, and Brava, Ms. Lee.

From the press release:

Harper Lee has made an outstanding contribution to America’s literary tradition. At a critical moment in our history, her beautiful book, To Kill a Mockingbird, helped focus the Nation on the turbulent struggle for equality.

To Kill A Mockingbird is on my top ten favorite books list. I have read it dozens of times, and will doubtless read it dozens more. IMHO, it should be in the list of the top three American novels, with Huckleberry Finn in the number one slot and The Great Gatsby third. (Hemingway doesn’t come on the list at all. I think he’s an overhyped hack.)

So good for you, Ms. Lee. You deserve it.

George W Bush has announced that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a civilian.

The medal, established in 1963, is awarded for an “especially meritorious contribution” to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, or for their accomplishments in the areas of culture or “other significant public or private endeavours.”

Lee won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for the novel, which is credited with helping to focus the country at the height of the civil-rights movement by raising awareness of the injustices of discrimination.

It tells the story of a small-town Alabama lawyer, Atticus Finch, who defends a black man accused of raping a local white woman. The narrator of the story is six-year-old Scout, the daughter of Atticus.

Although downplaying the idea that To Kill A Mockingbird is semi-autobiographical, it bears a striking resemblance to her early life. She was born in Monroeville, a small town in Alabama, and her father was also a lawyer.

In 1931, when Lee was six, nine young black men in Scottsboro, Alabama, were accused of raping two white women, and, despite the lack of any evidence, the men were convicted by an all-white jury.

Meryl just mentioned “The lack of world condemnation of the Israeli raid on an nascent Syrian nuclear plant…“, and here it comes:

Mohamed ElBaradei accuses Jewish state of ‘taking the law into its own hands’, says ‘if countries have information that another country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us’

Yes, them are strong words ElBaradei has for the jingoist Zionist pirates. Law and order, law and order, ladies and gentlemen! After all, this is what the mighty UN is for.

Let’s see what is it precisely that Mr Elbaradei has in mind for Syrians.

…if countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us. We have the authority to go out and investigate,” he said.

Uhu. Got it? They will come and investigate.

Like they did with that reactor in Iraq.
Like they did in the Balkans.
Like they do in Darfur.
Like they do in Congo.
Like…

Thanks, but no thanks.

(From Ynet via Shimshon9).

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

It’s funny, but one of the things that I seem to have lost in the changeover from writing the HTML for this site myself to using WordPress was my regular commenters.

Granted, I have regular commenters now, and some of you are the same ones that have been around for many years. But I was looking for the posts I wrote about teaching in the past, and wound up going through some months of posts, and, well, there were a lot more comments back in the old days, it seems. Just take a look at this week’s worth of posts and you’ll see what I mean. Very few posts went without a single comment, and two of the more controversial ones had dozens. (Yes, I know, the Messianic “Jews” posts always generate huge debate, but still—lotsa comments.)

What happened out there? How did I lose so many regular readers? Or did you all just stop commenting?

It’s strange, because I have more readers now than I had in 2005. But you’re a lot quieter.

Then again, sometimes I like it quiet. Fewer things to worry about.

Eh. You know me. Never quite happy with the status quo. Onward and upward, and all that.

Well, once I’m done with my bat mitzvah, I’ll have a bit more time to devote to sprucing things up around here.

One thing I will be doing is keeping my cobloggers. The new guy, Elder of Ziyon, is doing a great job. Soccer Dad and Snoopy have been great, too. My blog is in capable hands.

Regular blogging will return on November 5th. Possibly the fourth. I’ll probably post my speech, and maybe even put up a few lines of my haftarah. Gawd. I can’t believe it’s Monday. Holy crap. Four days left to cram for the big day.

Very, VERY funny. Thanks to Allahpundit.

The rest are at the link.

Fatah has a real good racket going on - they do the Mafia-style “threats” and no one calls them on it:

The top negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), warned on Sunday that the region would suffer greatly in the event that the upcoming Annapolis peace conference failed.

“If the summit fails – frustration will win out over everything else and it will have a negative affect on the region. I cannot predict exactly what will happen, but it may lead to more wars.

“I warn now against failure there, which will open the door for extremists and extremism – and that door will be very difficult to close,” said Qureia at a conference held by Meretz activists.

Oh, he can predict precisely what will happen all right - if past history is any guide, Fatah is planning the newest intifada phase right now in anticipation of a summit that doesn’t accede to all of their demands, just as they did in 2000.

Notice also the usual Arab subtext that they cannot control their “street.” This excuse has been used for decades, but for some reason they manage to control their people quite fine - and brutally - when they go against the wishes of whatever regime they are in. It is only when they want to do something that the Arab regimes agree with that they turn into such a “threat.”

I have previously described this as “the diplomacy of fear,” a well-used part of the Arab negotiating lexicon. It is quite effective so there is no reason for Arabs and Muslims to stop using it.

cross-posted at Elder of Ziyon

In The Attempt to Kill Olmert, Barry Rubin writes

Several Fatah security force officers assigned to protect Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he went to meet with Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas, it has just been revealed, planned to assassinate him instead. This event should be amazing enough to get people to rethink their premises. After all, it is late 2007, with a supposedly moderate leadership running the PA and Fatah, and this kind of thing is still happening.It should be emphasized that the would-be assassins were Fatah, not Hamas, and that they were quickly released by PA authorities before outside pressure forced their re-arrest. (Prediction: they will be freed soon with little or no international media coverage.)

But this is merely the same basic pattern as happened with the assassins of Israeli government minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001 or the gunmen who seized the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002: international indifference, a show of PA law enforcement, and terrorists go free. Not to mention thousands of other attacks when the PA had a chance to teach its own people about the politically counterproductive—not to mention immoral and divisive–nature of terrorism.

He follows this up with eleven reasons why this never seems to change. The final reason starts:

No speeches, no foreign aid, and no international plans or meetings have altered these basic rules.

The Palestinians pay no political or diplomatic price for their bad faith.

If we go back to the exchange of letters between Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat, the latter wrote:

The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historic event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability. Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.

The fundamental premises of certifying the PLO was no longer a terrorist organization, were that it had renounced terror and that it could control all of its elements to bring them into line. The latter condition has been violated as much as the former.

But it’s not just that these conditions have been violated, it’s been who has been responsible for this neglect. Surely successive Israeli governments have failed to address Palestinian violations adequately. (And when Binyamin Netanyahu did he found himself on the wrong side of the Clinton administration.)

But there have been plenty of aiders and abetters. As Rubin points out the Palestinians have flouted every norm of relations with Israel by allowing terrorists to escape (Israel) justice. In March 2006 6 of those prisoners who were being held in Jericho were preparing to break out. The international monitors who were supposed to watch them had left out of fear. These were terrorist who hid in the Church of Nativity and, at least one of whom was involved in the killing of Israeli tourism minister Rehavem Ze’evi. Israel permitted them to be jailed in Jericho under international observation as a condition of their being allowed to leave the Church. Now four years later, that agreement was about to be broken so Israel, under Prime Minister Olmert, took action and raided the jail capturing the 6.

How did the Washington Post react in an editorial?

So it’s not surprising that Mr. Olmert would have ordered yesterday’s sensational raid on a Palestinian prison in the West Bank, in which Israeli forces captured six militants accused of murdering a right-wing Israeli minister in 2001. True, Palestinian leaders invited the intervention by suggesting that the ringleader of the group would soon be freed, and U.S. and British monitors withdrew from the prison minutes before the raid, reportedly because of their own objections to security arrangements. But this was an act tailored for Israeli voters, some of whom will be as pleased by the predictable expressions of Palestinian and international outrage as they are by the roundup of bad guys.

Cynicism, pure and simple. The Palestinians had once again shown that they were unreliable protectors of Israeli interests (as a peaceful neighbor ought to be) and the Washington Post post charges the Israeli Prime Minister of playing politics when he rectifies the situation.

The Washington Post, I’m sure, was reflecting a view common in political, diplomatic and academic circles. Israeli claims are mere posturing. It’s the needs of the Palestinians that must be met for there to be peace in the Middle East.

Of course by prescribing a Palestinian state without ensuring what kind of state it would be puts the cart before the horse.

By creating a destabilizing nation in the Middle East the world will not bring peace. Until the Palestinians accept responsibilities of self-government and of peaceful relations with Israel, their state will solve nothing.

Nor should it come as a surprise to anyone that that would be the case. Back in 1983, Daniel Pipes wrote “How Important is the PLO?” in which he wrote about the corruption and tyranny with which the PLO ruled its “state within a state” in Southern Lebanon. But the past performance of the PLO was ignored as the future returns of a Palestinian state were heralded as essential to peace.

The peace processors who have ignored the past and excused (and continue to excuse) Palestinian bad behavior are not helping the cause of peace.

President Bush is preparing for the failure of sanctions against Iran. I think he really means it when he says that Iran will not be allowed to produce nuclear weapons.

The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to military sources.

The improvement of the B1 Spirit jet infrastructure coincides with an “urgent operational need” request for £44m to fit racks to the long-range aircraft.

That would allow them to carry experimental 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs designed to smash underground bunkers buried as much as 200ft beneath the surface through reinforced concrete.

One MOP - known as Big Blu - has already been tested successfully at the US Air Force proving ground at White Sands in New Mexico. Tenders have now gone out for a production model to be ready for use in the next nine months.

The “static tunnel lethality test” on March 14 completely destroyed a mock-up of the kind of underground facility used to house Iran’s nuclear centrifuge arrays at Natanz, about 150 miles from the capital, Tehran.

The lack of world condemnation of the Israeli raid on an nascent Syrian nuclear plant is probably heartening to those supporting the bombing of Natanz. But I don’t think that Bush cares one way or the other whether the world condemns him over taking out the Iranian nuclear capability.

We have been at war with Iran since 1979, although it is a war that has never been officially proclaimed. Iran funds the enemies of America. The Iranian-founded and -backed Hezbollah murdered 241 American soldiers in 1983. The Iranians have been killing American soldiers in Iraq for the past four years. The Iranians are smuggling arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It’s an undeclared war against America, just as Iran has been waging an undeclared proxy war against Israel.

Get ready for $120 a barrel oil sometime after the November elections. I don’t see W. backing down on this one.

Abbas, Olmert pledge ‘meaningful’ understandings

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas agreed on Friday to try to find a meaningful agreement to take to a planned Middle East meeting, an Israeli official said.”They agreed to try to reach, as soon as possible, a meaningful statement,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said after two and a half hours of lunchtime talks between the two at Olmert’s official Jerusalem residence.

Abbas’s “meaningful understandings”
1) Next time we catch someone trying to assassinate you Mr. Prime Minister, he will serve at least 4 months in prison. Not a day less.
2) We recognize the historical connection of the Jews to the land of Israel.
3) We respect the archaeological integrity of the Temple Mount.
4) Heck, we even recognize Israel’s right to exist.

In other news.
Rice taps Clinton, Carter for Middle East advice (h/t Pillage Idiot)

Carter?

Clinton

At a time when the CIA is supposed to provide assurances that it will deal with all matters of terror, the question remains: Even In the case of the murder of two US citizens, has the way that the US intelligence community has dealt with the murder cases of David Boim and Nachshon Wachsman represent any indication as to how the US will continue to relate to Israel’s security concerns ?

Bush 43

So if my source could find out that a member of Aziz’s cell (not Aziz himself - I asked that question) is going to be part of this training course, why can’t the CIA? Or if the CIA has figured it out, why don’t they care? We’re not talking about someone who committed an act of terrorism in the pre-Oslo period. We’re talking about someone who was part of a group that murdered ten people, including a 16-year old American, in April 2006.

Finally - h/t Daled Amos who writes:

It’s like a political “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”–with the worst possible lifelines.

- Powerline writes

Was Rice always this bad, or has she changed course in order to regain the esteem of the foreign policy establishment before she heads back to private life?

I guess the answer’s here:

“She realizes that her legacy right now is really very poor,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and a strong critic of the Bush administration. “If she can pull this off, she will be seen as a real historical figure.”

Brzezinski’s criticism must have really stung.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

RIVERSIDE, Calif., Oct. 26 (UPI) — A federal agency has banned flag-folding recitations at U.S. veterans cemeteries after a complaint over religious content. The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise said the recitation, used at thousands of military burials, explains the significance of each of the 13 folds of the flag. The newspaper said a complaint was lodged against the words for the 11th fold, which “celebrates Jewish war veterans and “glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

Much as I’m riled by these senseless displays of political correctness, I wonder who the heck has the time necessary to perpetrate these acts of stupidity. Clearly the number of government employees in some places is above what is really needed.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

At Soccer Dad.

The topics are:

Blogging
Antisemitism
Culture
History
Israel
The Rabin Assassination
Judaism
Politics
Torah
Kiruv

Next week’s hostess is Mother in Israel.

To submit a post for next week, click here. Deadline for submissions is Friday.

And about damned time.

Of course, we can’t discount this being the usual Palestinian spokesliar propaganda.

A senior Palestinian official said Israel dramatically reduced fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip on Sunday after threatening to impose sanctions in response to rocket attacks from the impoverished Hamas-ruled territory.

But Israel, whose defense minister, Ehud Barak, gave a green light last week for cuts to Gaza’s fuel and electricity supplies, said the measure had not yet been implemented.

Mojahed Salama, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Petrol Agency, said Sunday’s fuel imports showed a 40 to 50 percent reduction in diesel and benzine supplies and a 12 percent reduction in fuel for Gaza’s power plant.

“We sent the supplying company the same daily requests but they said they were sorry and that because of the new imposed sanctions they could only send us a reduced quantity,” Salama told Reuters.

Gaza’s power plant received a full supply of fuel on Sunday, officials with the European-funded fuel supply program said.

Here’s hoping Olmert carries through with his threat. Why should Israel supply her enemy with the tools needed to kill her own people?

I love elephant jokes, as I’ve said before.

Anyone have any new ones? Or at least, ones that haven’t been posted in the comments here before?

Look at how crappy their security is on their own nukes. Maybe Russia will just build something so shoddy it’ll kill the Iranians running it.

A small amount of radioactive material leaked while being transported across the grounds of Russia’s main nuclear waste processing plant, the facility’s management said in a statement Friday.

The leak occurred Thursday on a service road during routine transportation from one part of the Mayak facility to another, it said. An unspecified problem with a hermetically-sealed valve on a cistern containing the material caused the spillage of liquid medium-grade radioactive waste.

No one was injured, and personnel at the nuclear facility, located in the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural mountains, have begun to decontaminate the area, the company said.

Mayak also said that the no personnel or vehicles leaving the compound were exposed to radiation as a result of the leakage. It said radiation levels in the area were within the norm.

And by the way: I call bullshit on the boldface claim. Chernobyl, baby. Chernobyl.

Mom can come to the bat mitzvah. Her orthopedist told her to take it easy, use her cane, and get a wheelchair to go through the airports. She’s going to stay in a hotel room with my cousins, which leaves the sofabed for my brother.

And I had a great haftarah session with Elisson today. I seem to have turned a corner in the learning process. We were only going to do a few lines, and wound up doing nearly all of the second half. I was reading the last few lines cold, having never practiced them, and doing fairly well at it. Looks like I’m picking up the trope after all.

Shabbat shalom, and thanks for the well-wishes. They’re working.

Another good news story for us all.

A Dutch couple posthumously received the highest honor for non-Jews from Israel’s Holocaust center Thursday for their bravery in sheltering a Jewish family from the Nazis during World War II.

Hendrikus and Martha Snapper were named “Righteous Among the Nations” at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

[...] As a labor official in the town of Naaldwijk, Hendrikus Snapper was confronted early on with the registration of Jews, the appropriation of Jewish property and the expulsion of Jewish children from public schools, Yad Vashem officials said.

In the summer of 1942, he became active in a local underground group and was put in contact with a Jewish couple, Rosa and Levy de Hartog.

The de Hartogs had received a deportation notice and were frantically searching for a hiding place. The Snappers decided to open their home to Rosa de Hartog, whom they presented as their housekeeper. They found hiding places for Levy de Hartog and their five children, according to Yad Vashem officials.

[...] “Most houses (in the Netherlands) were too small for hiding spaces. People had to take in strangers in clear view and concoct a reason for their presence,” said Johan Snapper, the Snappers’ son, now a professor of German and Dutch studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The penalty for hiding Jews was a concentration camp or death, Snapper said, speaking at the ceremony. “Our parents understood that.”

In May 1943, a massive recruitment of Dutch men for forced labor in Germany began. Snapper used his position at the labor exchange to forge documents and falsify information for the de Hartogs.

[...] The entire de Hartog family survived the war and was reunited afterward. A photograph of the two families together after liberation was on display during the ceremony.

More than 30 members of the extended Snapper family traveled to Israel for the ceremony. Surviving children of the de Hartogs - Truus de Hartog of the Netherlands, and Salomon de Hartog of Israel - were also present.

“Nothing has ever made a bigger impact on me, as young as I was,” Johan Snapper said of witnessing his parents’ heroism.

Shabbat Shalom.

In other nations, when the elected government of a nation takes responsibility for an armed attack on another nation’s soldiers, it’s called a war. But this is Israel, where none of the regular rules apply.

Hamas took responsibility on Friday for a shooting attack near a West Bank settlement in which an IDF soldier was seriously wounded.

Wednesday’s attack began at the Ariel junction, where terrorists sprayed a hitchhiking post with bullets from 100 to 150 meters away before speeding down a busy road while firing at passing cars.

A previously unknown offshoot of Fatah had taken responsibility for the shooting, which also lightly wounded a civilian.

But Hamas said Friday in a statement on its Web site that it was responsible. The claim, which appeared to be more reliable than that of the Fatah group, was delayed in order to give the attackers time to evade Israeli security, the group said.

Hamas operatives “continue their heroic and high-quality operations to teach the enemy a lesson,” the statement said.

So the democratically-elected government of the Palestinian terrortories[sic] is taking responsibility for armed terrorist attacks on civilians, and is bragging about nearly killing a soldier. These are the people that Jimmy Carter and others think Israel should include in the upcoming conference with the Palestinians.

I think they should talk to them, too. With the business end of an Uzi. Or a Hellfire missile.

A modern Orthodox rabbi from Los Angeles has published an essay in the Jewish Journal saying his reasons why Jerusalem should be negotiated. In order not to take any of his comments out of context I will print the entire article here:

The question of whether we could bear a redivision of Jerusalem is a searing and painful one. The Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel and a variety of other organizations, including Christian Evangelical ones, are calling upon their constituencies to join them in urging the Israeli government to refrain from any negotiation concerning the status of Jerusalem at all, when and if the Annapolis conference occurs. And last week, as I read one e-mail dispatch after another from these organizations, I became more and more convinced that I could not join their call.

It’s not that I would want to see Jerusalem divided. It’s rather that the time has come for honesty. Their call to handcuff the government of Israel in this way, their call to deprive it of this negotiating option, reveals that these organizations are not being honest about the situation that we are in, and how it came about. And I cannot support them in this.

These are extremely difficult thoughts for me to share, both because they concern an issue that is emotionally charged, and because people whose friendship I treasure will disagree strongly with me. And also because I am breaking a taboo within my community, the Orthodox Zionist community. “Jerusalem: Israel’s Eternally Undivided Capital” is a 40-year old slogan that my community treats with biblical reverence. It is an article of faith, a corollary of the belief in the coming of the Messiah. It is not questioned. But this final reason why it is difficult for me to share these thoughts is also the very reason that I have decided to do so. This is a conversation that desperately needs to begin.

No peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians will ever produce anything positive until both sides have decided to read the story of the last 40 years honestly. On our side, this means being honest about the story of how Israel came to settle civilians in the territories it conquered in 1967, and about the outcomes that this story has generated.

An honest reading of this story reveals that there were voices in the inner circle of the Israeli government in 1967-1968 who warned that settling civilians in conquered territories was probably illegal under international law. But for very understandable reasons — among them security needs, Zionist ideologies of both the both secular and religious varieties, memories that were 20 years old, and memories that were 3,000 years old — these voices were overruled. We can identify with many of the ideas that carried the settlement project forward. But the fact remains that it is simply not honest on our part to pretend that the government of Israel didn’t know that there was likely a legal problem, or that the government was confident that international conventions did not apply to this situation. That just wouldn’t be an honest telling.

An honest reading of the story reveals that the heroes of Israel’s wars who became the ministers in its government, who were most responsible for the initial decision to settle, were quite aware that by doing so they were risking conflict with the Arab population that was living there. They were aware that these Arabs would never be invited to become citizens of Israel, and would never have the rights of citizens. Nonetheless, they decided to go forward. Some believed that the economic benefit that would accrue to these Arabs as a result of their interactions with Israelis and Israel would be so great that they wouldn’t mind our military and civilian presence among them. Others projected that some sort of diplomatic arrangement would soon be reached with Jordan that would soften the face of what would otherwise be full-blown military occupation. These may have been reasonable projections at the time. But as it turned out, both of them were wrong. And it’s not honest to tell the story without acknowledging that we made these mistakes.

The Religious Zionist leadership (similar to today’s Evangelical supporters of Israel) made a different judgment, namely that settling the Biblical heartland would further hasten the unfolding of the messianic age. Thus, the Arab population already there was not our problem. God would deal with it. This belief too — reasonable though it may have seemed at the time — has also turned out to be wrong. To tell the story honestly, this mistake too must be acknowledged.

And the difference that honest storytelling makes is enormous. When we tell our story honestly, our position at the negotiating table is one that is informed not only by our own needs and desires, but also by our obligations and responsibilities. The latter include the responsibility to — in some way, in some measure — fix that which we have done. Also included is the need to recognize that we have some kind of obligation toward the people who have been harmed by our decisions. Honesty in our telling of the story reveals the stark and candid reality that we also need to speak the language of compromise and conciliation. Not only the language of entitlement and demands.

To be sure, I would be horrified and sick if the worst-case division-of-Jerusalem scenario were to materialize. The possibility that the Kotel, the Jewish Quarter or the Temple Mount would return to their former states of Arab sovereignty is unfathomable to me, and I suspect to nearly everyone inside the Israeli government. At the same time though, to insist that the government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story — a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule the people we conquered, a story in which we don’t owe anything to anyone. Cries of protest, in particular from organizations that oppose Israel’s relinquishing anything at all between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and which have never offered any alternative solutions to the ones they are protesting against, are rooted in the refusal to read history honestly. And I — for one — cannot lend my support to that.

Without a doubt, the Palestinians aren’t telling an honest story either. They are not being honest about their record of violence against Jews in the pre-State era, or about the obscene immorality with which they attacked Israeli civilians during the second intifada. They are not being honest about the ways in which their fellow Arabs are responsible for so much of the misery that they — the Palestinians — have endured, and they certainly are not being honest about the deep and real historical connection that the Jewish people has to this land and to this holy city. And there will not be peace (and perhaps there should be no peace conference) until they tell an honest story as well. But for us to take the approach that in order to defend and protect ourselves from their dishonest story, we must continue telling our own dishonest story, is to travel a road of unending and unendable conflict. Peace will come only when and if everyone at the table has the courage, the strength, and enough fear of God to tell the story as it really is.

For many decades we have sighed and asked, “When will peace come?” The answer is starkly simple. There will be peace the day after there is truth.

Rabbi Kanefsky says many right things, and he makes a few mistakes, to reach a very wrong conclusion.

He is entirely correct that there cannot be peace until there is truth. Unfortunately, he is not being entirely honest himself as he conflates the history of Jerusalem after 1967 with that of Judea and Samaria - the Israeli government annexed Jerusalem and did offer citizenship to all its Arab residents, so his arguments would be more powerful if he would only be referring to the rest of the West Bank and not Jerusalem.

His major mistakes, though, are not historical but tactical. His yearning for truth in negotiations may be admirable, but when one is in a situation where only one side is willing to tell the truth, it puts that side at an enormous disadvantage in a neutral forum.

I touched upon this point recently when I discussed the British commission of inquiry after the 1929 riots, where they listened to the Arab claims of ownership of the Western Wall and the Jewish claims that only God owns the wall - and they sided with the Arabs. The Jews could have made a compelling legal case for historic ownership of the entire Temple Mount but instead they told the truth. And in that forum, they lost.

Whenever third parties look at competing claims, they make the assumption that both claimants are fundamentally honest and that the truth is somewhere in between. When one side has no compunctions about lying, that side has a tremendous advantage over the side that is willing to admit mistakes. Honesty will be used against the truth-tellers.

Simply put, the Arab/Israeli conflict is a land dispute. If one side claims all the land and the other side equivocates about that question, naturally the side that claims it all is in a position of power.

This is not to say that Israel should lie. Its true claims are powerful enough, if they are not often stated as well as they should be. But this means that Israel should not negotiate by showing its hand as to what it is willing to give up - because these are essentially one-way negotiations, the question is how much land Israel will end up losing, and not what she will get in return because that is intangible (and almost certainly fantasy.) An “honest” negotiator will always lose because you will never find both sides putting on the table their final position.

Israel’s legal, moral and historic claims to Jerusalem - and the entire West Bank as well - are very strong, but they have been given up by successive Israeli governments, in some part because of this desire for “honesty.” Is Israel in better shape now than before Oslo? Is real peace any closer? Has Israel reaped rewards for its honest negotiations, which translates directly into capitulations?

It is unfortunate but becoming increasingly clear that “peace” is literally impossible with the current generation of Arabs. “Honesty,” goodwill gestures, pleading, and the intense interest of most of the world has led to nothing. Israel’s relative safety vis a vis its neighbors (as opposed to terror groups) is a result not of peaceful negotiations but because of Israel’s success at war.

Sure Israel has made mistakes. No one should cover up errors or change history. But honesty has little to do with negotiations.

Kanefsky’s major error is the assumption that both sides want peace and have the capability to deliver, and his advice (glowingly quoted in The Forward) is very, very wrong.

See also “The Case for a Larger Israel” for a completely different way of looking at things.

The Washington Post about the sanctions against the Revolutionary guards:

“The president does not want to be stuck — and doesn’t want his successor to be stuck — between two bad choices: living with an Iranian nuclear weapon or using military force to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons,” said Peter D. Feaver, who recently left a staff position on the National Security Council. “He is looking for a viable third way, negotiations backed up by carrots and sticks, that could resolve the Iranian nuclear file on his watch or, failing that, offer a reasonable prospect of doing so on his successor’s watch.” Even so, the administration’s actions yesterday immediately rekindled fears among Democrats and other countries that the administration is on a path toward war. Bush’s charged rhetoric in recent months, including a warning that Iran could trigger a “nuclear holocaust,” and his close consultations with hard-liners — such as former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz — have led many outside the White House to conclude that the president will order airstrikes to eliminate any Iranian nuclear capability. “The choice of words has given rise to concerns about just how serious the president is about stopping Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold on his watch,” said Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iran.

For those who oppose the action why? If President Bush saw war as a first option he’d be laying the groundwork for that now. But he’s trying to restrain Iran through diplomatic means. Why the objection? Is it a general objection to everything the administration does or is it because an Iranian nuclear capability isn’t something that worries his critics? As Allahpundit writes:

I wrote about this once before in the context of the Palestinians but it bears noting anew that sanctions are, theoretically, an option favored by the left precisely because they don’t involve military force. “We have other levers of power besides the Army,” they’re forever reminding us. Which is true; Bush is using one of those levers now. Are they happy? Of course not.

To Sen Clinton’s rivals this diplomatic maneuver is “saber rattling!” And Sen. Clinton sensitive to the criticism is already looking for a way out. more from memeorandum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There was a typically arrogant column in Ha’aretz earlier this week, Nimrodi’s Test by one Ehud Asheri. It’s about the change in leadership at the helm of the competing daily, Ma’ariv.

Ofer Nimrodi, owner of the mass-circulation daily newspaper Ma’ariv, has been experiencing something unfamiliar these days: rare esteem and praise is greeting the appointment of the editors-in-chief Doron Galezer and Ruthie Yuval, the likes of which the battered publisher has never enjoyed.Fifteen years after he bought the newspaper, there appears at long last the possibility that he will be extricated from his outsider position in print journalism and will earn equal status in the exclusive club of the veteran publishers who, unlike him, were born into the industry.

The change in the way the wind is blowing can be attributed first of all to what Galezer and Yuval represent: traditional, independent, investigative journalism that is not linked by umbilical cord to wealth, does not habitually hobnob socially with politicians in the places they frequent, and is not tainted by obsequious populism.

Both of them grew up in the solid school of the Haaretz group, and both have proven that it is possible to maintain the values of classical journalism even in the commercial environment of the mass circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, and television’s Channel 2.

Gee that’s subtle. Ha’aretz doesn’t stand for anything high minded. It is New York Times of Israel. For those who like Ha’aretz, that’s meant as a compliment, for those who don’t, well, I don’t need to spell it out.

The author then goes to dismiss outgoing Ma’ariv editor Amnon Dankner.

The departing editor, Amnon Dankner, was Nimrodi’s energetic defender in the criminal affairs in which the latter was embroiled, and Dankner’s appointment gave the signal for two main trends in the editorial line: the popular bordering on sensationalism, and a battle against “the rule of law and order gangs” (and the old elites in general).

One of Dankner’s sins was that he didn’t automatically assume that everyone involved in Israel’s legal system was above criticism as most folks at Ha’aretz assume. That’s why it’s implied that he was against the rule of law.

Until now, you could dismiss Yedioth Ahronot - too commercial and Ma’ariv - too sensational, but you could always rely on Ha’aretz. Yes, siree. As good as money in the bank.

Of course, maybe Mr. Asheri ought to be careful and not hurt his arm while he pats himself on his back. Michael Totten reports

The Syrian state-run propaganda organ Cham Press published a fake story about Lebanese Member of Parliament Walid Jumblatt’s supposed plan to meet Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the United States last weekend to coordinate a regime-change in Syria. No Western media organization I know of took this non-story seriously. Israeli media, though, scooped it right up. Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and Infolive TV published their own articles about the imaginary meeting between Jumblatt and Barak. None had a source for their story other than the Syrian government’s website.

And that led to

Cham Press now says Israel’s Omedia reported that Jumblatt met with Barak and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington. Cham Press no longer quotes only itself; it quotes Israeli websites as backup. But the only reason Israeli media reported any of this in the first place is the initial false story appearing in Cham Press. Syrian media is still just quoting itself—only now it does so through Israel.

Credibility is an important asset for any news organization. I suspect that this wasn’t the first time Ha’aretz has been fooled. What that saying I’ve heard about pride?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.